💰 Why expired patents are a product idea goldmine

Happy Trends Tuesday!

Today we’ve got:

• 1 untapped product goldmine
• 1 piece of operator wisdom 
• 1 startup you should know about

Let's get to it.

💡 IDEA GOLDMINE

Every week thousands of patents in the US and Canada expire, and less than half have been commercially exploited.

If you learn to use the patent archive, you’ll never run out of product ideas again.

Here are some ways repurposing existing IP (legally) can lead to big profits:

1. Surprising markets: Consider the expired patent for a device to hold a napkin to protect your clothes (yes, a bib). Ridiculous? Well, people on Etsy and Amazon are already bringing in thousands selling them.
   
   
2. Old design, new tricks: The patent that’s used in high-end sports gloves (baseball, hockey, cycling, etc) expired in 2021. Coupled with the rise of pickleball, one glove is already doing $15k/mo on Amazon.
   
   
3. Keep it simple: A patent for under bed storage that installs with no hardware recently expired. As it turns out, search volume for just that was spiking earlier this year. Similar solutions are already driving huge revenue ($204k/mo from under-bed trays).

🔮 PLAN YOUR FUTURE

🧠 OPERATOR WISDOM

Trends member Samuel Jackson (no, not that one) got his start in aerospace engineering and electronic warfare. Today, he puts that experience to work helping entrepreneurs make their business systems more efficient.

We opened Sam’s notebook to show how a process engineering pro refines startup systems.

1. Map the process as-is. Don’t think about solutions just yet, this step is about listening and understanding. To do it right, interview the people involved and collect evidence from each step. Then, compile everything into a process map.
   
   
2. Identify waste. Next, put that data into other formats that show waste more easily, like swim lanes or a value stream map. This will reveal which parts of your system are taking the most time or duplicating effort.
   
   
3. Design the new system. Finally, it’s time to cut the waste and make your system as efficient as possible. This will be different for each business, but a good place to start is looking at your wasteful steps and ask:

• • Can we cut this?
  • What would happen if we went straight from A to C (or A to Z)?
    
  • What is the bare minimum we need here?

The results of this process can be staggering. In one case, Jackson reduced a software release cycle from 8 weeks down to 1 day.

🔥 STARTUP YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT

After noticing that Bay Area farms were struggling to attract workers, Yang Fang got to work designing an autonomous lawn mower. Despite some early customers, the model wasn’t scalable.

So, in 2021 he pivoted to automating existing farm equipment by adding cameras and AI software.

Early results are impressive:

• As accurate as human labor
• Can cover ~30x more area per day than a single person
• Nearly 600 acres of grapevines pruned in the last four months

Read the full story on The Hustle blog to learn more about Beagle Technology, the startup converting traditional farming equipment into AI-enabled robots.

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